The pub and the decline of the British value of neighbourhood friendship

As pubs have dwindled, so has the nation's virtue

SIR – The big talking-point this week has been what we mean by British values. You were right that these “are rooted in the institutions and history that underpin the nation”. It’s not doing as you would be done by, which is common to people of many cultures.

One institution that has undergone change is the pub. The wartime handbook for GIs, Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain, had this to say: “You are welcome in the British pubs as long as you remember one thing. The pub is 'the poor man’s club’, the neighbourhood or village gathering place, where the men have come to see their friends, not strangers.”

With the decline of the pub (with the ban on smoking, cheap alcohol drunk at home, loud music, and, oddly enough, “24-hour drinking”) the number of neighbourhood friends has diminished and the number of strangers grown. The loss of an institution has meant a loss of virtue.

Elizabeth Johnson Norwich

SIR – The current Prime Minister says that “British values” should be taught in schools. The BAE scandal of a few years ago centred on suggested bribery payments. The SFO anti-corruption investigation into this was essentially terminated in 2006 by the then prime minister and his government.

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What praiseworthy British value was the government displaying by taking that action?

Dr Bob Turvey Bristol

SIR – When listing their ideas of British values, neither David Cameron nor Nick Clegg suggested freedom of speech or freedom of the press.

Nicholas Oakden Rockland St Mary, Norfolk

SIR – “The chief and governing purpose is to declare our belief and trust in the British way of life, not with any boastful self-confidence nor with any aggressive self-advertisement, but with sober and humble trust that by holding fast to that which is good and rejecting from our midst that which is evil we may continue to be a nation at unity with itself and of service to the world” – official book for the Festival of Britain, 1951.